Domestic politics, not conflict, will settle U.S.-China competition
Dangers at home the more pressing threat to each side's worldview
Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The recent virtual summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping offers a glimpse of the future direction that escalating strategic competition between the U.S. and China will take in the coming years.
While the summit produced few concrete outcomes and may have delivered no more than a short pause in rising bilateral tensions, the international community should be encouraged by the declaration by both leaders that they would do their best to avoid turning competition into a calamitous conflict.
This is no mere rhetoric. Any sensible observer knows that a military clash between two nuclear-armed adversaries can produce no winner. A full-fledged new Cold War would not only fragment the global economy, but also doom humanity's last hope of averting a climate Armageddon.
With both Beijing and Washington now settling in for the long game, the outcome of the U.S.-China competition will be decided on their homefronts.
America's inherent advantage will continue to be its dynamic and innovative economy. The huge technological edge the U.S. currently enjoys over China may continue to erode as Beijing pours enormous resources into its R&D, but it is highly unlikely that China will completely close the gap.
Washington's Achilles' heel will be its dysfunctional and polarized political system. Trumpism has now taken over the Republican Party, which has been waging a scorched-earth battle with the Biden administration over voting rights, social protection, climate change and the fight against COVID.
In many key states that will decide the future of American politics, such as Florida, Georgia and Texas, GOP-controlled state administrations have recently passed laws to restrict access to voting and potentially allow partisan state legislatures to decide the outcomes of elections.
In the short-term, a likely Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in next year's midterm election will all but doom President Biden's domestic agenda and return Washington to partisan gridlock. If Donald Trump runs again in 2024 and recaptures the White House, American democracy could face an existential test.
Since President Biden has framed U.S.-China competition as a titanic ideological struggle between democracies and dictatorships, the possible descent of the U.S. into a right-wing illiberal regime will undoubtedly undercut Washington's efforts to rally its democratic allies to compete against China.
Sadly, while the dangers of America's political dysfunction and polarization are well-known, there is no obvious solution on the horizon. Ultimately, the unbridgeable division could lead to generalized ungovernability and, if the clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and far-right groups in 2020 were an indication, widespread vigilante violence.
Compared with the U.S., China in the coming 15 years can probably look forward to more political cohesion.
Depending on his health, President Xi's grip on power should remain firm. Defended by an extensive and sophisticated surveillance state, the ruling Chinese Communist Party faces no imminent major internal threat.
America's efforts to contain Chinese power have also, at least for the moment, fueled nationalism and rallied the Chinese people around the party. The biggest political test for the CCP will likely come in the mid-2030s when it has to confront the issue of post-Xi succession.
Beijing's primary weakness is its economic policy. Driven by America's decoupling strategy and its own statist ideological beliefs, China has been closing the door to the outside world and tightening the screws on the private sector. The "dual circulation" strategy, which China rolled out in its 14th five-year plan in March, has raised concerns that Beijing is turning inward.
The ambitious goal of achieving tech self-sufficiency is perfectly understandable in face of America's unrelenting offensive to choke off Chinese access to advanced technology, but China's mixed record on industrial policy and its traditional reliance on state entities to innovate makes one wonder whether the Chinese government will have better luck this time around.
The answer is likely to be a "no" if you consider China's failure to reform its inefficient state-owned enterprises, the heavy-handed crackdown on its dynamic tech sector and stifling regulations, such as the newly enacted data security law and mandatory cybersecurity review of Chinese companies seeking overseas stock listings.
To be sure, Beijing has justifiable reasons to tighten regulatory oversight of tech companies and improve the protection of consumer privacy. But the sweeping crackdown, implemented with little consultation with those businesses affected, seems to be a cure far worse than the disease.
In the years ahead, if Beijing continues to pursue an economic strategy that prioritizes state-owned enterprises, national security and political dominance, it will pay a huge price. The party may, on the surface, maintain full control over the market and technology, but the Chinese economy will inevitably lose its dynamism and cost China its race with the U.S.
U.S.-China competition may appear to be an open-ended duel. But the outcome of this rivalry should become clear in the next 10 years. The country that wins the competition on the home-front will almost certainly prevail in the defining geopolitical contest of this century.